ARGYNNLS VII. 



anxiety. I arranged a keg with a gauze bag liigli over the top, wliieli was con- 

 fini'd by the upper hoop of the keg, and phinted fresh violets, which had to be 

 renewed ahuost daily, covering the earth partially with stones, and setting sticks 

 which might serve as resting places f®r the larvae. This appeared to answer the 

 purpose well. The larvte were fond of resting on the sticks, head downward, or 

 upon the sides of the bag, coming down to feed when impelled by hunger. After 

 remaining motionless for hours, they would suddenly arouse and start off in 

 extreme haste, running all about the inclosure, and on reaching the leaves would 

 feed ravenously, and then return to their resting place. Not uufrequently they 

 were extended on the stoaes or the damp earth as if for coolness, the weather 

 at this time having become warm. 



It is uncertain whether the larvae of butterflies see distinctly, or at all. al- 

 though they are furnished with what are called ocelli, there being five of these 

 organs on either side of the head. On one occasion I happened to be at hand 

 when an Aphrodite suddenly started down the side of the l)ag, to disappear below, 

 and presently emerge on one of the upriglit sticks. This it ran over and about, 

 and from a point on the side of it towards the plant made great efforts to reach 

 one of the stems, which wiis at something more than an inch distant from the 

 stick. Several times the caterpillar stretched itself out till it was nearly twice 

 its natural length, holding to the stick by its anal and last pair of ventral clasp- 

 ers, and moving its head and body from side to side to feel for the plnnt. But 

 the attempts were in vain. Then it reuu)unted the stick, and reached out in 

 a similar manner from the top in directions where were no leaves, till at last 

 it turned right again, and hy an effort more violent than usual, seized a stem by 

 its jaws and first pair of legs, and holding l)y them, dropped its body from the 

 stick and climbed to the leaf There was evidently a sense of direction in the 

 first instance, from the descent of the bag to the reaching the stick, though not 

 of sight, as the stick was fixed at the base of the plant, and the latter was as 

 easily reached as the former. And when on the stick, there was a sense that the 

 leaves were near, without a certainty of the precise locality. 



Only three Ci/hele reached cluysalis and one Aphrodite. They spun buttons of 

 white silk and hung suspended, nearly straight, the anterior segments but little 

 bent, and so continued for about two days and nights in the case of Cijhele, 

 thirty-six hours in Ajjhrodite. This last died in chrysalis; the others yielded the 

 imago in twenty-two to twenty-four da\s. The Diana suspended in a similar 

 manner last of all, on seventeenth of May. and the change to chrysalis occurred 

 on the nineteenth, the interval having been fifty-four hours. It was so pro- 

 longed that I feared lest the larva had not vitality sufficient to enable it to 

 change, and when on rising in the middle of the last night to see what the fate 



